This standard provides organizations with the elements for an environmental management system (EMS), which can be integrated into other management systems to help achieve environmental and economic goals. It describes the requirements for registration and/or self-declaration of the organization’s EMS. Demonstration of successful implementation can be used to assure other parties that an appropriate EMS is in place. It was written to be applicable to all types and sizes of organizations and to accommodate diverse geographical, cultural, and social conditions. The requirements are based on the process and not on the product. It does, however, require commitment to the organization’s EMS policy, applicable regulations, and continual improvement.

The basic approach to EM begins with the environmental policy, which is followed by planning, implementation and operation, checking and corrective action, and management review. There is a logical sequence of events to achieve continual improvement. Many of the requirements may be developed concurrently or revisited at any time. The overall aim is to support environmental protection and prevention of pollution in balance with socioeconomic needs.

The standard is not intended to create nontariff barriers or to change an organization’s legal obligations. In addition, it does not include aspects of occupational health and safety management, although an organization may include these aspects in the documentation.

In order to understand the requirements, a few definitions are necessary. Environment is defined as the global surroundings in which an organization operates and includes air, water, land, natural resources, flora, fauna, humans, and their interaction. Environmental aspect is defined as an element of an organization’s activities, products, or services that can interact with the environment. Examples are wastewater discharge, air emissions, and energy use. Environment impact is defined as any change, whether adverse or beneficial, wholly or partially resulting from an organization’s activities, products, or services. Examples are impacts on habitat, water supply, and soil erosion. Environmental objective is an overall environmental goal, arising from the policy statement, that an organization sets for itself and which is quantified when practical. They define how the policy will be achieved. For example, an objective could be to control the temperature of the wastewater effluent. Environmental target is a detailed performance requirement and should be quantified when practical. It needs to be met in order to achieve the objective. For example the wastewater temperature should be controlled between 10 and 14 degrees centigrade.

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Development activities ought to reflect the situation and circumstances of a company, its business objectives and its key priorities. For example, there is little point in a company building hypothetical team skills without addressing the following:

The purpose of the team. For example, a bid team might require specific bidding skills such as defining value in customer terms.

Where team members are located. People in virtual teams may be widely scattered and they may need special training.

The role of groups and teams in the management of change, the management culture and management style must be supportive.

The clarity of the goals given to teams, and the relevance of their priorities to business objectives. People need to understand the broad boundaries within which they operate in terms of goals and priorities.

The discretion given to teams, and the extent to which people are given the required freedom to act.

The commitment of senior management to team work, and especially cross-functional and inter-organizational team work. They must be dedicated to ensuring that decisions are taken as close to the customer as possible, and people are enabled to do what is necessary to add value for customers.

Prevailing attitudes, such as the extent to which people feel part of teams. Empowered team work should be pervasive, rather than the isolated experiment.

The management cadre. Managers should counsel and coach, value diversity, and foster and encourage teamwork, collaborative activities, self-development and group learning.

How open people are, and the degree of trust and confidence they have. People need to feel they are able to take initiatives without being paralyzed by fear of the consequences.

Existing performance within teams, the tools shared within teams, and the approaches and support in terms of technology and process available to them. For example, there should be relatively open access to relevant information.

Rewards and performance management. This should be supportive of, and should recognize, team work, the acquisition of team skills and the exhibiting of role-model behavior.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, Lectures, Line of Sight

What sort of structure would help the team function innovatively? The purpose of any structure is to make sure that certain essential tasks, especially repetitive tasks, get done. Structure need not be incompatible with creativity if it realeases time and energy for creative work rather than blocking creativity with excessive rules, specialization, centralization, etc. What, therefore, needs to be done is to make an inventory of tasks that must be performed more or less repitively, and allocate these tasks to individuals within or outside the team.

However, the roles of team members should not be defined only in terms of these tasks; there are only minimum elements of their roles. It is important to define roles broadly and not too strictly. Some ambiguity helps interaction and role clarification, not by the leader but by the situation. Indeed, it heps to have versatile team members, i.e., persons who can double for others should the need arise. Periodic interchange of roles within the team can help develop this verstality. Researchers have indicated some specific roles in innovative teams beyond those for effective teams. The creative scientist/engineer/idea man is one role. The entrepreneur (vis-à-vis the outer world) and the intrapreneur (vis-à-vis the team members) are further roles. The entrepreneur seeks new missions for the group. The intrapreneur seeks new activities within the broad mission for group members. The protector-defender-sponsor is a fourth role, whose function is to get the team the resources it needs for innovative work from the larger system of which it may be a part, and also to defend the team from external pressures or attacks. The gatekeeper is a fifth role, that of bringing to the team essential market, technical, or political intelligence from outside that can become the basis for meaningful divergent thinking. These roles need not be played by different individuals. The important point is that they should get played.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, Line of Sight

In considering strategies for supporting or protecting core distinctive competences and growing new ones, the issue of resource demands has to be considered. One means of releasing resources is to review those distinctive competences that are no longer central to the strategic future. As is often the case in organizations, competences and distinctive competences emerge, and become embedded into the culture/conciousness of the organization. However, as organizations change their strategic direction, the utility of these competences may reduce, sometimes with them becoming completely irrelevant. Identifying these will free up resources—creating strategic slack. Where competences (or the activities supporting them) are to be withdrawn, careful considration of how this is to be achieved is necessary (who needs to be consulted? What needs to be put into place?) so as to ensure that the resources are freed up rather than covertly protected.

An obvious means of freeing up resources is through outsourcing. Through building the business model, those areas that are considered potential candidates for outsourcing will have been scrutinized. Often organizations outsource units, departments and tasks without considering the overall impact on the business model, or on a distinctive competence. Understanding how the particular area or task to be outsourced fits in with the overall model can thus ensure a more sustainable and coherent approach.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, Line of Sight

Management is usually viewed as continuous process that lasts without a break for the whole of your organization’s life. But some jobs are clearly projects; they do a specific job, have a distinct beginning and end and a fixed duration. When the job is done, the project is finished.

People have developed special approaches to project management. A project manager often has overall control and can have very wide-ranging responsibilities. The project team does not follow the usual ‘line of authority,’ but is seconded from line functions. This gives a matrix structure where people have divided responsibilities. The control of projects is made easier by dividing them into phases running from conceptual design through to termination. There are special methods for planning projects.

Managers have increasingly realized that they can use these methods in their everyday work. You probably find that a lot of your work is not continuous, but consists of a series of projects. Consultants work for different clients, software houses work on different packages, marketing departments run a series of promotions.

Project management can bring a lot of advantages to your work. It gives the expected times for some key activities, and the computer automatically prints schedules for activities and all resources. More generally, project teams have the benefits of:

Using management methods that recognize the nature of projects;

Solving problems quickly, as the right people are assembled to concentrate on a solution.

Spreading expertise around the organization, as team members move on to new projects and share their experiences;

Using resources efficiently, as they are released to other projects when not needed;

Tightly controlling operations, with constant feedback on progress.

This does not mean, of course, that project management is better than continuous management. But project management does give an additional set of management tools that you might find useful.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, Line of Sight

Given your current defection rate, how often must you replenish your customer pool?

Has your CR rate increased during the past 3 years?

What is the lifetime value (LTV) of a customer?

What is the cost of a lost customer?

What percentage of your marketing budget is spent on customer-retention activities?

On average, how much do you spend on current customers annually?

What criteria does your company use for developing targetted retention programs by market segment?

Do you invest more on high-value (A) customers?

How does your firm use recency, frequency, and monetary value (RFM) analysis?

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please contact www.asifjmir.com, Line of Sight

Solutions to an organization’s problems cannot be found outside the organization. An organization possesses the potential and the capability to solve its own problems. This assumption is also a value, in that it asserts that change is most successful and effective when people in an organization act collectively to generate solutions and implement actions. In other words, solutions that are imposed on an organization from outside have little chance of success. The role of leadership in change is to expose the organization to challenges and problems faced, to mobilize support for change and to create the right conditions for people inside the organization to generate ideas for improvement.

Organizational change, in its essence, is about bringing a change in an organization’s routines. The term routine refers to the ways in which people perform their activities in an organization. It includes rules, procedures, policies and conventions. It includes both the formal (written) aspects of an organization’s architecture and its informal (unwritten, tacit) aspects. An organization’s policy for recruiting staff is a routine. Its procedure for evaluating quality is a routine. The way in which employees in an organization actually respond to customer complaints is another routine. For a specific behavior to be an organizational routine, it must be both repetitive and widely shared.

The second assumption is based on both empirical and theoretical ideas in organization studies. Activities that are performed to carry out day to day tasks of an organization are also referred to as operational routines. Some organizations also develop special kinds of routines, developed with the explicit objective of modifying existing operational routines in order to enhance the organization’s effectiveness. These are referred to as dynamic capabilities. If an organization already has well-defined dynamic capabilities, there is little need for anyone to manage change. However, the need for change arises because many organizations lack such dynamic capabilities.

Organizations can change their routines in three ways: first, they can modify an existing routine. A modified routine is different but not fundamentally different from original routine. Second, they can discard or eliminate an existing routine. Here, the organization stops performing a particular task or activity. Third, they can establish a new routine. This may take the form of introducing a new policy, procedure or task to perform a new set of activities.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please contact www.asifjmir.com, Line of Sight